Press releases October 2008

Geneva, 21 October 2008. Swiss President Pascal Couchepin and French Prime Minister François Fillon were joined at CERN1 today by science ministers from CERN’s Member States and around the world to inaugurate the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instrument.

Geneva, 20 October 2008. Swiss President Pascal Couchepin and French Prime Minister François Fillon will be joined at CERN1 tomorrow by science ministers from CERN’s Member States and around the world to inaugurate the Large Hadron Collider. The world’s largest and most complex scientific instrument, the LHC circulated its first beam on 10 September 2008.

Geneva, 16 October 2008. Investigations at CERN following a large helium leak into sector 3-4 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel have confirmed that cause of the incident was a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator’s magnets. This resulted in mechanical damage and release of helium from the magnet cold mass into the tunnel.

Geneva, 3 October 2008. Today, three weeks after the first particle beams were injected into the Large Hadron Collider—the world’s largest particle accelerator—the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid celebrates the start of its crucial data challenge: the analysis and management of more than 15 million Gigabytes of data every year, to be produced from the hundreds of millions of subatomic collisions expected inside the LHC every second. This data-handling feat marks an essential stage in the process of enabling researchers to discover new physics.

Geneva, 2 October 2008. Following the successful circulation of first beam in the LHC on 10 September, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instrument will be officially inaugurated at CERN on 21 October 2008. Representatives of the governments of CERN’s Member and Observer States and other participating nations have been invited.